These reviews are especially gratifying coming from a venue primarily interested in the romance genre. For a long time, a retrograde fear of what author Debra Doyle calls girl cooties has infected the world of science fiction, and hard SF—science fiction that uses and privileges real science—was the worst of all: “Hard sf” is their science fiction of choice, because it has the fewest girl cooties of any of the sf subgenres. No subjectivity, no mushy bits, none of that messy relationship stuff getting in the way of the classic sf values of hardness and rigor (and no, I don’t think the elevation of those particular values is coincidental.), Doyle writes.

Romance, of course, is wall-to-wall girl cooties. Perhaps not surprisingly, the feeling was often mutual—hard SF was seen as the precinct of uber-nerds and nobody interested in human relationships would want to ever want to read any. Sometimes this fear of girl cooties even enters into the world of real speculative science, as biologist Athena Andreadis points out with her essay (with a not-safe-for-work drawing) on 2009′s Singularity Summit. (The Singularity being a concept beloved of hard SF fans and, increasingly, policymakers and scientists.)

But in Japan, at least as far as SF literature is concerned, girl cooties and hard SF mix just fine. Why, one might say that the units of “girlishness” in books like The Next Continent and Rocket Girls aren’t an infection at all, but actually an organic part of the human condition. Science is for everyone, after all, as it increases our understanding of the universe in which we live, and as it can potentially be used to improve all our lives. Indeed, if we want science to improve our lives rather than destroy them, we’d all better have an interest in the field and its implications for policy, health, and the environment. That’s why hard SF needs to be written for a wide variety of readers, not just for the nerdcore hardcore of those men who are afraid of “girl cooties.” Publishing hard SF titles that can be reviewed and championed by Romantic Times is one reason why I love my job.

Hey. I was just wondering if Haikasoru were planning on creating a Facebook page.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I rather hate Facebook, or rather, I hate the rationale behind it. Perhaps social networking and all the stigma associated with it, in general.

It’s just that Facebook has become a daily routine for me, and there are whole lot of authors/companies/artists that I follow for the latest news about things I’m interested in – and they’re all conveniently located on Facebook now. All you’d really have to do is create a page, with a company profile and some links, and whenever there’s some news, or a new blog post, post a mirror on Facebook. This would also let people spread the word some too. It’s low-cost publicity and a way for fans to follow the latest news.

Hmm, we’ve thought about it, but we don’t know how much action a Facebook fanpage would get. Do you look at the main VIZMedia Facebook page? We try to get our stuff up on there as well. We also have a Twitter!